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| Sunday, 22 May 2005 |
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Bangladesh paralysed by strike DHAKA, Saturday (AFP) Main cities across Bangladesh came to a standstill on Saturday as part of a day-long strike called by the opposition Awami League in protest at the gunning down of a party member. Lawyer Khorshed Alam, legal secretary of the Awami League's Dhaka section, was shot dead at close range on Tuesday by unidentified assailants, sparking a rampage by up to 400 party activists. In Dhaka, shops, businesses and schools were closed on Saturday and private vehicles were off the roads. There were similar scenes in the southeastern port city of Chittagong and in Sylhet in the northeast, police said. Saturday is a normal working day in Bangladesh. "We have around 9,000 police personnel on stand-by in Dhaka but so far there have been no clashes between police and activists," Dhaka police chief Mizanur Rahman told AFP. A Dhaka-wide strike was also held on Wednesday to protest the killing. The strike is the latest called by the main opposition Awami League party to highlight a series of attacks on lawmakers and party members. The attacks include a grenade assault on a party rally last August that killed more than 20 party activists and which has been described by Washington as an assassination attempt on party leader and former prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed. In January, five members of the Awami League, including lawmaker and ex-finance minister Shah AMS Kibria, died in another grenade attack at a rally. Last May, the Awami league member of parliament Ahsanullah Master was gunned down at a political meeting. Police said earlier they were investigating whether internal party bickering could have been the motive for Tuesday's killing. Eleven nationwide strikes and one Dhaka-wide strike have been held this year while last year saw more than 20 opposition-sponsored stoppages, despite pleas from donors and the business community. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said last year that
strikes cost the impoverished country's economy between 1.6 and 2.2 billion
dollars each year. It urged all Bangladesh's political parties to replace
the shutdowns with peaceful protests that do not deter foreign investment. |
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